I'm curious to know the operator of the flight?
I'm not excusing lack of communication but here's a few things to think about from the crew perspective. We're supposed to make announcements at pre determined intervals. The crew HAD to have known what was going on, because one of the pilot would have been the one to call for assistance.
The other thing to think about is how to make the announcement without causing any further attraction to the offender. It's not as if the CA should say "well folks, looks like there's an idiot in the lav taking a smoke break, so as soon as the folks arrive that will apprehend him, we'll be underway."
This is one of those weird situations that you have to tip toe around. The crew can't lie, but they also should try to keep people informed with causing a situation to spiral out of control. Perhaps since the delay was so quick, the CA determined it was best to just not say anything. While they might have been busy, they were likely not so task saturated that if they couldn't have made an announcement should they have chosen to do so. IMO, there's always time to keep people informed. I won't however, judge the crew, since I wasn't there.
I'm not really sure what the OP was looking for. If the whole plane knew what was going on, is there really anything to say?
Thanks for the posts. They were all appropriate. I think that during those 20 minutes someone should have said something and that eventually happened. It was an RJ 145 and I was in 1A so I could see the co-pilot who never moved from his seat and talked occasionally with the FA. We have an axeum in the communication business: negative feedback is better than no feedback at all. Thus, there was the pilot, co-pilot, FA, and two DL ground officials on or near the metal that could have been in touch. Five to ten minutes into the incident someone should have said what was eventually said, "someone was smoking in the restroom, the police are here, the person has been removed from the flight, and we are working on the problem." BTW, I called DL executive offices in ATL and suggested the crew communicate with us--perhaps why after 20 minutes we heard from the pilot.